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Game Description

Six hundred years ago The Enemy landed on Earth. They gave no name for themselves and made no demands, but we called them demon, alien, dragon, or simply The Enemy. Such a powerful threat unified humanity for the first time in its history in a war that lasted more than one and a half centuries. Whole generations lived and died under the shadow of war, and the earth was torn apart as humanity cut deep into the planet, scrambling for resources and using every measure available to fight The Enemy’s war machines and the monsters that they used in their hostile ecological takeover of Earth. We covered our retreats with nuclear fire, and supplemented our woefully inadequate birth rate with billions of humans grown in artificial wombs. Ultimately, nothing we could do was enough, and the war ground to a bloody halt.

Ninety years into the war, humanity finally found the weapon it needed to break the bloody stalemate that the war had become. For years humanity grappled with the difficulties of AI in an effort to further boost their numbers and reduce the war’s staggering human cost. The theorists pinned the blame on many factors, but ultimately the research never panned out, and that was that. Hope for a solution was all but abandoned until a team of scientists managed to scan a human brain accurately enough to digitize it. Backed by massive processing power and giant autofactory complexes, these new robotic generals turned the war around in our favor. It took decades more fighting, and the people born on the eve of the war were decades dead, but we finally saw the day The Enemy turned tail and fled Earth, abandoning many of their soldiers on an increasingly hostile world.

We underestimated how dangerous a foe backed into a corner with no hope for escape could be. Of all people we should have known better. The remnants of The Enemy’s invasion force had their revenge. Somehow they managed to turn many our greatest defenders against us. The safeties we had installed in case of such an event failed spectacularly. In a last ditch effort the handful of loyalist AI cores decided that the only way to survive to continue the fight was by disconnecting themselves from the world, jamming every long range radio frequency, and shooting down anything that flew too high despite the fact that the manufacturing restrictions and behavior-blocks we placed on them remained in place. Suddenly humanity’s last strongholds lost contact with the outside world, leaving the soldiers on the surface cut off from their homes and fighting against former allies. It was only until much later that those of us who survived returned to our cities to find smoking fissures and craters where they once stood. The Enemy had their revenge.

What little humanity remained tried to rebuild, but we did not have the expertise the hypnotically trained technicians and scientists in the cities die. We were all soldiers and officers—mostly vat-born—trained to fight since we were young. The intricacies of technology were as lost on us as they were to the scattered remnants of our artificial allies so we improvised and reverse engineered what we could, forging new states.

Gradually, memories faded, and new cultures sprung up. Again, we became our own worst enemies despite the harsh world that lay outside our walled strongholds. It has been centuries since the darkest days of the war, where our survival was in doubt, but the world is still a hard place where we must fight to survive.

What this Game is

This is a BESM 3e game that is primarily focused on writing and role-playing, even in combat (though there will certainly be combat). Characters will be playing mech pilots in the service of the State of Xia, but you should expect to spend a great deal of time outside of combat interacting with the world and each other (so you should be comfortable developing your character outside of combat). There will be many personal subplots depending on your own character’s backgrounds and the minor NPCs you provide as well as larger issues you can get involved in (or not). This game has many post apocalyptic elements, but you still live in a fairly well developed nation state.

Exceptional roleplaying or acting in character when it seriously inconveniences your character will be rewarded with character points, but as always, this is a group game, so even if it is in entirely character to constantly object to another PC finding alternatives that don’t complicate the game will be rewarded.

Character Creation:

-Character sheets only need to be finished after you are accepted into the game
-All characters will be built with 150 points excluding the cost of your mech
-No more than one atribute at 5.
-Skills will be based on the higher of either Post Apocalyptic and Mecha
-You can select one mech frame and as many customizations as you can afford (the number of CP allotted is listed with the mecha). You do not keep leftover CP.
-Characters should have a culturally appropriate (Chinese) name. I can provide resources if you need them.

-Characters must provide a one sentence summary of character concept, short but well written description, personality, and personal histories, and two RP samples one out of combat and one in combat (these don’t have to be long, but they have to showcase your writing ability)
-You must also list 3-5 NPCs (friends or enemies) that your character has a meaningful relationship with. A few sentences each will do, but since these are your plot hooks, it is in your interest to make up NPCs you want to interact with.

Government:

Like all surviving humans, you are descended from the (mostly) cloned soldiers and officers of the human resistance. This has proven to be a mixed blessing overall. While you are slightly tougher, more physically powerful, and braver than a (now extinct) baseline human, your ancestors’ genetic modification was hardly enough to make superhumans (in game terms these modification do not have any mechanical impact). More importantly, today’s culture was shaped by soldiers who (despite humanity’s best efforts) never had a normal childhood or a healthy family, and who often saw active duty military service as early as sixteen years of age. There is no question then that most cultures today would be highly ordered and militaristic even without such a hostile world. Confucian ideals of social order (tempered with a healthy dose of Legalism) came naturally to the survivors.

The state of Xia is an absolutist Confucian monarchy. The king is the head of state, and is assisted by five major ministers the (king’s prime minister and the ministers of Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn) all of whom have been selected through the state’s Civil Service exams. Likewise almost all commissioned officers in the military are civil servants, not promoted soldiers. This creates a fair bit of tension between officers and their soldiers, but at least incompetence is rare and punished harshly.

Daily Life of a Commoner:

In general, there is a sharp divide between commoners (who consist of farmers, factory workers, tradesmen, merchants, artisans, soldiers, etc.) and the gentry (who consist of anyone who can afford to study for a position in the civil service or otherwise afford an education. This includes scientists, officers, and bureaucrats). Your characters are all commoners, and will likely stay that way. You would not be soldiers if you weren’t—no matter how elite

Commoners are further divided into a lower class of laborers and a middle class dominated by literate merchants and artisans as well as some noncommissioned officers. Elite infantry like you fall somewhere in between these two extremes. You receive a fairly generous salary, but unlike wealthier commoners, you can’t necessarily read, and may still depend on the standard pictograms created for the benefit of the illiterate masses. Despite this, both classes still fall very much below the gentry.

All commoners are required to pay their taxes in either money or unpaid service. The middle class can usually afford to pay their way out of public works projects or militia training, but the military is still a respectable career.

The typical commoner in the city lives in a crowded high rise building. Regardless of your wealth you can count on functioning indoor plumbing and decent sanitation, as well as mostly reliable electricity (brownouts and power rationing aside). Depending on your means, quality of life varies widely, but land inside the safety of the city’s walls is never cheap. If you can afford anything more than an apartment you are by definition no longer a commoner. Outside the cities, people tend to gather together into small walled villages. These are somewhere between a cooperative farm and an armed camp, and they are the source of most of the state’s food.

Most commoners live on a diet of grain (used to make noodles and steamed bread) and seafood (which is generally farmed rather than caught). This is supplemented by vegetables and spices which are often grown in rooftop gardens or bought at the market. Meat that isn’t seafood is generally considered a luxury item although a wealthier commoner can usually afford things like chicken, pork, frog, etc. Restaurants are popular among the middle class since it is impossible to entertain a large number of guests in a small apartment.

Medicine is not very good. Most people rely on herbal remedies, (some actually work) first aid, and strong wills. A well-trained doctor is not cheap, to commoners.

Crime in cities is very common despite extremely harsh punishments (due mostly to spotty law enforcement). Gangs and organized crime terrorize the back alleys and run the black markets and shady establishments in each city in Xia.

Military Life:

Xia’s professional military is made up of a small core of officers drawn from the gentry and professional soldiers drawn from the lower classes. Whenever they’re needed, reservists are drawn from the people who paid their taxes by undergoing militia training.

Xia’s military does allow women to serve, though being female is a major obstacle to advancement—given the death rate, it is considered irresponsible not to have children. Typically conscripted units have almost equal numbers of men and women, but professional units like your own are more male dominated (around 70-80% male).

When they aren’t in service, professional soldiers are permitted to live in their own houses as long as they can report for duty within a half hour. If necessary, they can live in a barracks, but conditions there are crowded and unpleasant. Most choose not to

Xia’s professional military is almost entirely mechanized, and heavily dependant on APCs and IFVs (true tanks are very expensive). Their conscripts are generally transported by truck, and generally fight on foot.

As mech pilots you are considered elite troops. Your training is highly specialized, and mech is very fragile compared to conventional armor. However, you can fight where tracked and wheeled vehicles can’t go—you are a kind of rapidly deployable superheavy infantry. This gives you a very important role in the overgrown and scarred battlefields that are so common. You are also the first to be deployed against Xia’s nonhuman enemies.

Collectively, Xia's mech pilots are a all a part of the Demon company, which consists of 400 mecha plus suppourt staff. You are a very elite crowd, though the best of the best are the stuff of legends and rumours. The Demon Company is organized into squads of five pilots each. It is very rare for mecha to operate in larger groups than than that.

Mechs are generally fairly small, standing around 20 feet tall. They are smooth and do not generally follow human proportions—they have longer and thinner legs and arms, and no heads. Xia depends on three main mech frames, each powered by several high temperature carbon fuel cells. These are listed bellow:

Type 14 Medium Frame “Lotus”: This is the most common frame in service with Xia. Its armament is highly flexible, and it can manage a respectable speed. While it is not truly flight capable, it is equipped with a jump pack.

Type 22 Reconnaissance Frame: This small and fast frame is equipped with many sensor systems as well as stealth gear. It is also incredibly fast. Both of these attributes come at the cost of armor, though the Type 22 is surprisingly well-armed for its size. Like the Lotus, it is also jump pack equipped though not flight-capable.

Type 9a Airborne Frame: This is the only truly flight capable mech in Xia’s inventory. This advantage is limited by the fact that flying too high risks coming under heavy antiaircraft fire. The type 9a also has to save on weight and is not as heavily armed or armored as it’s counterparts. It is also slightly clumsier on the ground than it’s cousins.